Two 27-year-old South African men, Tshepo Cameron Modisane (pictured left) and Thoba Calvin Sithole (pictured right), tied the knot Saturday in a ceremony that is being heralded as the nation’s first gay wedding, according to the Huffington Post.
The couple was married in the town of KwaDukuza and stood before 200 guests as they exchanged their vows. On a continent that views homosexuality as vile lifestyle, both men were brave enough to proudly proclaim their love for one another in a public setting.
Modisane and Sithole met three years ago as students studying in Durban but then lost touch for a few months. They later bumped into each other at a gym and became fast friends, supporting each other during workouts. As their chemistry grew, the men soon realized that their relationship was moving past mere friendship.
Posts tagged as “Africa”
NEW YORK — Halle Berry says she’s a woman of compassion and Michael Kors says he’s a man of action. Together, they want to make a dent in the battle against hunger around the world. The actress and fashion designer announced a philanthropic campaign Monday called Watch Hunger Stop that includes raising money through the sale of a version of Kors’ best-selling Runway watch. For each $295 watch sold, 100 meals will be provided to children through the U.N. World Food Programme.
Berry and Kors are planning to visit places together where the meals will be sent. They could land in Africa, in Syria, perhaps Central America. The 46-year-old Berry, who is expecting her first child with fiance Olivier Martinez, said in an exclusive joint interview Saturday with Kors: “I hope we go while I’m pregnant, so I can talk about prenatal care.”
Berry and Kors are planning to visit places together where the meals will be sent. They could land in Africa, in Syria, perhaps Central America. The 46-year-old Berry, who is expecting her first child with fiance Olivier Martinez, said in an exclusive joint interview Saturday with Kors: “I hope we go while I’m pregnant, so I can talk about prenatal care.”
(Photo: Getty Images)
Nigeria is beating the drums of optimism regarding its satellite-based space program in the hopes that the data collected will help the country with securing steady agricultural production. The country currently has three satellites in orbit, and although Nigeria boasts one of Africa’s biggest space programs with some impressive accomplishments since its start in 2003, not everyone is sold on the plan. BBC reports:
The satellites are tracking crops and weather around the country in an effort to protect long-term food supply. There is also closer monitoring of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where there has been massive crude oil theft and environmental damage from oil spills.
Elijah Oyedeji is part of the team that worked on NigeriaSatX and found the initial task of building a satellite program from scratch quite daunting. “Eventually we were able to catch up,” he says. But not all Nigerians are convinced by these space ambitions. “These projects are always impressive to the ear,” says Akintunde Badiru, a Lagos-based banker, “that’s why they are commissioned in the first place.”
“Let’s see whether they are still functioning after four or five years, then we will see if this is worth it,” he says.
Read the full story here.
Elijah Oyedeji is part of the team that worked on NigeriaSatX and found the initial task of building a satellite program from scratch quite daunting. “Eventually we were able to catch up,” he says. But not all Nigerians are convinced by these space ambitions. “These projects are always impressive to the ear,” says Akintunde Badiru, a Lagos-based banker, “that’s why they are commissioned in the first place.”
“Let’s see whether they are still functioning after four or five years, then we will see if this is worth it,” he says.
Read the full story here.
article by Naeesa Aziz via bet.com
On Thursday (March 27), President Barack Obama met with the leaders of four sub-Saharan African countries in a bid to highlight the shared democratic sentiment shared between America and the nations. Present at the meeting were President Macky Sall of Senegal, President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, President Joyce Banda of Malawi, and Prime Minister José Maria Pereira Neves of Cape Verde.
Read more via Obama African Leaders: President Meets With African Leaders, Praises Continent’s Democratic Progress | Breaking News for Black America.
Wide open spaces: Projects like the one in Nanyuki could let people in the more remote areas connect to the internet
Beatrice Nderango is the headmistress of Gakawa Secondary School, which lies about 10km from Nanyuki, a market town in Kenya’s rift valley, not far from the Mount Kenya national park. The school is situated in a village that has no phone line and no electricity. The people that live here are mostly subsistence farmers.
“We don’t really have a cash crop, but the farmers do a bit of farming,” says Mrs Nderango. “They grow potatoes, a little bit of maize, but we don’t do well in maize because of the wild animals. They invade the farms.”
Although Kenya has fibre optic broadband thanks to the Seacom cable, most of rural Kenya is not connected and until now getting online would mean traveling to town.
But all of this is changing, thanks to technology that uses the unused parts of the wireless spectrum that is set aside for television broadcasters – the white spaces.
The project is part of the 4Afrika Initiative, an investment program being announced by technology giant Microsoft, that also includes a new Windows Phone 8 smartphone for the region and investment in help for small businesses on the continent, and in education and internships.
It is no longer news that many Nigerian artifacts are in Europe and America held by both public institutions such as Museums, Universities and Galleries as well as by private individuals, but what is new is the collaborative efforts being made by the Nigerian government and the countries where these artifacts are taken in the first place to repatriate them back to the country where they rightly belong.
One of these collaborative diplomatic efforts yielded a positive result yesterday when the French Embassy in Nigeria handed over five Nok Terracotta figures seized by the French Customs service in Paris. Nok arts came to light in 1928, when Co. J. Dent Young found a small terracotta head amongst the gravel from tin mining operations near the village of Nok in Jos Plateau of central Nigeria and since then these cultural materials were named after the village where the finds were made.
It is indeed unfortunate that so much Nok materials have been looted over time to supply the international art market which is supposed to be the exclusive cultural artifacts of the Nigerian people. So when the French Ambassador to Nigeria Jacques Champagne de Labriolle handed over 5 stolen artifacts of Nok origin to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCCM) last Tuesday many stakeholders in the art sector landed the move, describing it as a right step in the right direction.
Richard Wamai, an assistant professor of public health in the department of African American studies at Northeastern University in Boston, received the 2012 World AIDS Day Unsung Hero Award presented by Blood: Water Mission, a Nashville-based nonprofit organization that deals with AIDS and water issues in Africa. Professor Wamai is currently part of a global research consortium seeking to identify the best way to allocate funds to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. The research is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dr. Wamai is a graduate of Egerton University in Kenya. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in health policy from the University of Helsinki.
Karen Jackson-Weaver, associate dean for academics and diversity at Princeton University in New Jersey, received the university’s Martin Luther King Day Journey Award for fostering a supportive environment which helps students succeed. She has been on the staff at Princeton since 2007. Previously, she served as executive director of the Amistad Commission which integrated African-American history into the K-12 curriculum in New Jersey’s public schools.
Dr. Jackson-Weaver is a graduate of Princeton University, with a degree in history. She holds a master’s degree from Harvard University, as well as two additional master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Columbia University.
Howard Fuller, distinguished professor of education at Marquette University, received the Martin Luther King Jr. Heritage Award from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Professor Fuller is the founder and director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette. He is the former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public School system.
Dr. Fuller is a graduate of Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He holds a master’s degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a doctorate in the sociological foundations of education from Marquette University.
article via jbhe.com
Ms. Margarida Matsinhe (left) has worked in vaccine delivery in Mozambique for more than 30 years.
Sixty-four-year-old Margarida Matsinhe has won the 2013 Gates Vaccine Innovation Award for her “instrumental” work in overhauling the vaccine system in her native Mozambique.
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, made the announcement on Wednesday in his annual letter. The award recognizes “revolutionary ways” for immunizing the world’s poorest children. Nominees are assessed on innovation and creativity, impact and scale.
Matsinhe, a field officer with the non-profit Village Reach, has worked in vaccine delivery in Mozambique for more than 30 years, including during the country’s civil war and post-war reconstruction period. She currently serves on the government’s Committee of Experts on Immunisation and advises leaders on vaccine quality and distribution strategies.
Partly as a result of her work, Mozambique has achieved vaccine coverage of 95 percent, but Matsinhe says her goal is no less than 100 percent.
As a 12-year-old girl emigrating to America from Ghana, Sandra Appiah’s (pictured) background was certainly vulnerable to xenophobia.
And when she began high school, such attacks did come her way. But not from whom one might expect. “A lot of the comments I was receiving were from African Americans or a lot of the discrimination [came] from African Americans,” the 23-year-old noted about her teenage years in the Bronx.
“Every time we did something wrong, it was, ‘Oh, go back to Africa,’ or, ‘Oh, go back to the jungle.’ ‘You’re an African booty scratcher,’ or, ‘You stink,’ or, ‘You live in trees,’ or things like that. I had no idea where these ideas were coming from, because I remember in Africa I was a very happy child growing up.”
Eventually, Appiah discovered the reason for all the animosity from people she shared skin colors with. “CNN, PBS, all these documentaries, this is how they portray Africa,” Appiah continues. “So in their [African-Americans’] mind-set, this is the only way they know Africa to be.”
Rather than just accept this, though, Appiah knew she had to take action, co-founding a company called “Face 2 Face Africa” in March 2011.
Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock.com
Ever hear of Kate Henshaw-Nuttal? How about Genevieve Nnaji? You might soon. They are two of Nollywood’s top actresses. Nollywood (Nigeria’s film industry) is continuing to give Hollywood a run for its money… with help from moviegoers. The Nigerian film industry is now an $800-million industry, reports Forbes. And it’s becoming more global. In fact, even the Dish Network has recognized the power of Nollywood. It has just announced it will launch Africa Box Office (ABO), an Afro-Caribbean movie channel. ABO is broadcasts films exclusively from Nollywood, the prolific Nigerian film industry. It also airs films from other major African and Caribbean motion picture houses.
According to a press release, ABO is the largest Afro-Caribbean content aggregator for television in North America, broadcasting over 150 new movies per year, eight movies every day, and three premieres every week. It has a catalog of more than 1,500 African and Caribbean movies, leveraging the Afrotainment Family of Channels.